Let's Play Monmusu Quest: Paradox! part 45

Saloon (Another Rescue Mission to the Hills)

It's part 45 of the epic Monmusu Quest: Paradox playthrough (for part one, see here).  We're approaching the end.  Saloon is the last village/town to visit before heading in to the third Tartarus pit.  It can be reached by going through the mountain pass to the north of Gnome's ruins and then heading east.

Saloon is fairly straightforward.  According to gossip, a lot of the inhabitants are descendants of ninjas that came from the east.  They work or at least used to work for the Sabasa monarch.  Some still wander around in full ninja getup, even if they happen to be the postman.

It looks like there are a couple of quest strands from here.  Some NPCs talk about Mimi.  She's the NPC that sells accessories in the weapon/accessory store.  She went to the hills to the west of Saloon and hasn't come back.

The blacksmith can make crystal weapons, but requires us to fetch some raw crystal from the mines to the south of the town.  The problem with this is that the mines are currently the hideout of the scale thief corps, a bunch of thieving lizards that have been making a nuisance of themselves.

The scale thief corps are also the next item on Vanilla's list.  Sort of.  She wants holy and dark stones for the castle shop.  The item shop in Witch Hunt Village can sort out a supply for us, but we have to do something for her first.  The scale thief corps attacked a caravan and stole an agricultural stone.  The shopkeeper either wants that returned or the scale thief corps busted, not sure which.

Today we'll go off to the hills and rescue Mimi.

The hills are out to the west (basically, once you walk through the mountain pass turn left in stead of turning right to Saloon).

The monsters here are the same wandering monsters that can be found all over this section of the continent.  There is one new monster girl type – some kind of oni with eyes all over her body.

The succubus with the sword?  That's devil fighter.

Oh right, I don't think I've mentioned her on the playthrough yet.  Like big spider, she appears all over this part of the continent.

Devil fighter seems quite naïve about the sexual stuff.  Despite looking like a typical succubus, her race type is given as High Yoma.  In the castle she apologises for her shameful appearance and explains it's because her armour is passed down through the family, so she must wear it.

She might claim to be inexperienced in sexual matters, but if she wins she'll transport Luka to her own personal pocket dimension for some extreme nookie.  Oh, and that pocket dimension comes with its own naughty tentacles.

Unusually for the new monster girls, devil fighter has an additional request scene where she gives Luka a blowjob in her little pocket dimension.

In the middle of the hills we find someone lying on the floor.

It's Mimi.  She slipped and fell over.  After Luka gives her a medicinal herb she gets back to her feet and teleports back to Saloon with a harpy wing.  To claim your reward go talk to her in the weapon and accessories shop.

Hmm, that was relatively straightforward.  I was wondering if TTR had run out of fresh encounters for the hills, but to be fair I think all the hill locations have been like this (one new monster girl, the other encounters the same wandering monsters as in the surrounding region).

Tomorrow we'll tackle the scale thief corps in the mines to the south and hopefully secure ourselves some blingy new crystal gear in the process.

Let's Play Monmusu Quest: Paradox! part 44

Finding Gnome

We're up to part 44 of the Monmusu Quest: Paradox playthrough (for the first part, go back here).  Today we're looking for the second of the four elemental spirits – Gnome.  If I remember correctly she's located in some ruins to the north of Grandoll.  I'm guessing that would be these then.

In the original series there were two encounters in the desert on the way to Gnome.  Both return in the ruins.  First up there's giant sandworm girl.

She was the original series' nod to the giantess fetish, being that she's huge and her Bad End has her suck on Luka like he's a lollipop.

Oddly her design has been superseded somewhat by KC's rather innovative design in his own monster girl encyclopaedia.  I wonder what someone like Xelvy would make of the concept now.  I suppose I could also pull my finger out as well, given my own story on sandworm girls features a rather generic implementation of the concept.

The other returning encounter is Setouchi back on weird form with ant lion girl.  As with her insectile counterpart, she sits at the bottom of a pit of sand and sucks out the juices of any male (un)lucky enough to fall in.

As to how she sucks those juices out…

…c'mon, this is MGQ, you should know by now.

There are also two brand new monster girls.

Xelvy shows a degree of restraint with their desert scylla (restraint being a relative word in this case).

There's an amusing thing if you talk to the desert scylla (Deiji) back in the castle with a lamia in the party.  They have a big slanging off match with the lamia (in my case it was the Nefertiti lamias) telling Deiji an ugly octopus like her has no business being out of water and Deiji calling them barbarians in response.  Lamias and scyllas really don't seem to like each other in the MQ: Paradox universe.

The last of the four is another ghost girl, mirage girl.

Mmm, she's rather boobilicious.  Tempt me?  Well if you must...

Totally worth it.

They're also a really annoying encounter given they come in trios and have annoying magic attacks.  Poor Vanilla went up in flames pretty much every battle.

Now for Gnome.

As we wander around the ruins there are various cutscenes showing Gnome and her mud dolls watching and then running away.  The ruins can be divided into four quarters.  Gnome can be found next to the oasis in the top right (northeast) corner.

She specialises in Earth magic, so you might want to leave the imps home for this battle (or just level everyone up to be ridiculously overpowered).

After beating her, the sparkly gravestone in the same region now triggers a cutscene when read.  It's a semi-sad tale of a girl who befriended Gnome.  Her story highlights the disparity in life spans between flimsy humans and nigh-immortal spirits.  We see the girl grow up, get married, have kids, and then finally die of old age while Gnome remains the same.  I think it might be to explain why Gnome stays out here on her own with only her mud dolls for company.  The rest of the part tells her she doesn't have to be lonely anymore as they'll be her friends now.

In the original series, recruiting Gnome was the endpoint of the first chapter.  In Paradox we have the third Tartarus pit awaiting us.

But before then, there's another village to the north.  We'll check out Saloon tomorrow. (maybe, my write-ups have now caught up with my game progress – some frantic grinding in order (no, not that type of grinding!))

Let's Play Monmusu Quest: Paradox! part 43

Lucia's Tower (Introducing Edwina Fleshlight-Fingers)

We're at part 43 of my Monmusu Quest: Paradox playthrough.  If you're fresh here and don't know what the fuss is about, I'd suggest starting here.

Last up we had a choice between two mad sorceresses/alchemists and went with the one with the bigger tits, Lucia.  As people have pointed out, this was probably not the correct choice given her tendency to feed you to her giant grub pet if you ask for a bit of nookie back at the castle.

The tits are a lie.

The grub is the truth.

Oh well, at least we've resolved the little civil war down in this grubby (sorry!) little corner of the world to both Sara and Alice's satisfaction.  Alice thinks it's time to go and contract the second of the elemental spirits (rather embarrassingly, I still haven't figured out how to use Sylph correctly so far).  Sonya also lets us know that the town further north, Saloon, makes some strong crystal weapons that will be handy when it comes to exploring the third Tartarus pit.

Before then there is another location we haven't visited yet – Lucia's tower.

The tower is to the south of Witch Hunt Village.  As the war is over, Lucia's forces – a succubus nurse, cute l'il oni and slime girl with very big hands – are happily supping tea to the left of the entrance.

Normally that would be that, but Paradox as a game is very careful to make sure there are no Lost Forevers.  Rather than force the player to do enough finangling between Lily and Lucia so that they have an option to recruit both sides' forces, it takes the pure gameplay decision of just opening up her tower afterwards and treating it as a generic dungeon.

The tower is a bit of a maze with plenty of loot stashed in chests (and no fucking pots!).  There's no story part to be done here as we've already recruited Lucia, but there are three new monster girls to add to Luka's Harem (as well as further chances to recruit the Worm Villager and Iron Maiden if you haven't already got them).

The first is another out-of-sequence returner, the succubus nurse from chapter three.

She's the first to put the highly dubious incontinent state on characters.  She had quite a variety of artwork in MGQ: Chapter 3 if I remember correctly, which will probably mean a lot of different request moves in the castle.  Unfortunately, one of those probably features her using that giant syringe as a suction pump.  It will be good to have a trained nurse doctor in the castle… maybe.

Then there are two new brand new monster girls.  First up there's the spunky little oni.

In keeping with her mythological heritage she's one of many club specialists that can be utilised.  Her temptation move is quite sweet as well.

"Let's have sex!" makes for a refreshing change over "I'm going to swallow you and flood you in digestive juices."

The other is a specialised slime girl/automata cross with sex toys for fingers.

Edwina Fleshlight-Fingers was made to harvest sperm from either willing or unwilling donors.  Because of her protean nature she can change the shape of her fingers to match her 'partners's' specifications exactly.  Every sperm bank should have one.

Her Bad End has her give us a comprehensive milking with her squishy fingers.

Lucia might be the badder girl, but her forces seem a little more pleasant and less toothy than Lily's.

Let the Lily vs. Lucia debate rage on.

There's not much story in this section as we already cleaned that up going through Lily's mansion.  I suppose I could have been more thorough and used a side save to check out the alternate pathway, but to be honest I'm only barely keeping on schedule and the game is grindy enough as it is.

Hmm, an earlier finish does give me the perfect opportunity to plug my books again.  Check them out if you like reading about bad girls giving out sexy bad ends.  And only some of them eat people, honest.

Tomorrow its time to return to the desert in search of Gnome.

Let's Play Monmusu Quest: Paradox! part 42

Lily's House of Fun (Ah, Fuck! Pot!)

Welcome to part 42 of my Monmusu Quest: Paradox playthrough (for part one, go here).  Last off we were left with a choice – Lily or Lucia.  Mad sorceress/alchemist crazy or... uh, mad sorceress/alchemist crazy.

For this playthrough, and having no real clue as to the various benefits and drawbacks of either, I decided to side with Lucia.  She sounded slightly more reasonable than Lily.  I was also basing it on what I knew of the characters in the original series, not that that's relevant as both characters are slightly different to their MGQ counterparts.

Also, Lucia has the bigger tits.

Caveman snark aside, I doubt there's a correct answer here.  TTR loves playing around with shades of grey (no, not those Shades of Gray!).  It will be interesting to see if this choice has later repercussions in further chapters.

It also gives the game a little bit of replayability (Ha, like there isn't already with a 100+ roster of characters!).  This time up I picked Alice and Lucia.  When the English translation comes out I'll run with Ilias and Lily.

After we inform Lily we're here to punch her lights out, she sensibly uses her magic to chuck us out of the front door of her mansion.  It then becomes a conventional dungeon location.

In one of the rooms to the left I notice two chests.  One of them is suspiciously placed.  Obviously a mimic.  Now let's take a look in these pots first...

Oops.  I should have been more concerned about the pots.

Honey Pot is an upgraded mimic.  She has a similar suite of attacks – the one difference being a lash-all tentacle attack instead of mimic's devour attack.  As with mimic, she's designed to be way harder than the party the first time she's encountered.

And she is.  Luka can go toe to toe and his anti-ghost heroism attack in particular does a lot of damage.  The rest of the party (particularly the back line crippled with Bondage Rope) can't.  And...

At least she's not as predatory as mimic.  Her Bad End is to soak Luka in her ecstasy honey and squeeze out his seed forever.  Those are usually considered the better MGQ Bad Ends.

Ah, fuck! Pot! indeed.

A quick jog back to the mansion, some more exploration and...

Ah, fuck! Pot!

Okay, that's enough pot fucking.  The Honey Pots are a bit too hard for the current party.  I think we'll leave off checking any pots for treasure until we've levelled up the rest of the party a bit.

Monster girl encounters are the same as encountered in Lily's mansion in the previous series.  So we get the weird'n'wonderful iron maidens ( \m/ ) and suck vores.

Despite their unusual appearance, the suck vores are female.  TTR had to add a scene to the original MGQ showing a girl transforming into one just to show that.  I've also been told they're adorably cute when you recruit them, but as of writing this I haven't managed to recruit one to verify this.  Even with 100 affection and a 2x Recruit Chance ability on Luka thanks to the Demon Trainer job they're (and this is true for pretty much all the monster girls in Lily's mansion) still coy.

The new monster girl is one that was previewed on TTR's site previous to Paradox coming out.  I'd forgotten she was coming up to be honest.  Both me and machine translator make a hash of trying to figure out what her name is, so I'm just going to go with Bitey Scylla for now.

She is disconcertingly toothy.  In her Bad End she advises Luka to stay quiet and not struggle otherwise things might get bitey.

Hmm, sit back and let her suck all your man juice out, or struggle and get bitten in places we'd rather not imagine teeth being near, ever.  Talk about Hobson's Choice (or not, I'm getting my metaphors wrong – the correct one I meant is Morton's Fork.  Or is it Sophie's Choice.  Yeah, let's quit while I'm behind and move on.  And not think about teeth.)

The worm villager also shows up, but she appears to be a fairly rare encounter.

There are some steps leading downstairs, but trying to go down them results in the party being teleported to the first floor instead.  There's a crystal-ball-shaped item in a chest on the first floor here

that Alice informs us will be able to break the magic on the steps down.

The steps take us down into Lily's dungeon.  Her mind is clearly not in a good place.

We find her in her study at the end of short corridor.  She says she acts for the oppressed and that we can still change our minds.  I consider it, mainly because I know Lucia's area is the tower to the south of the village and I'm not sure if beating Lily here locks it away from the player for good.  I've got a previous save anyway, so it's time for a battle.

Hmm, Lily, don't you think this is a little forceful for a temptation attack.

Near the end she makes another plea for us to change our minds.  She mentions how Lucia has been her assistant ever since she was a small girl.  The game gives three option and to be honest, machine translation doesn't make any of them that clear.  I go with the second option, which results in a fight to the end.

Afterwards Lily acknowledges her defeat, but rather than her join the party as has happened with every fight so far, the game ominously tells us Lily has lost her mind.  As suspected, we can recruit either Lily or Lucia but not both unless in NG+ or hacking the game.

Going back to Lucia she tells us Lily had become obsessed with the voices of the oppressed and it had driven her mad.  Then her portrait changes to something a little more sinister and she says something I didn't catch but causes Luka to give the "............." response.

Oops, did we fuck up after all.

My worries about Lucia's area being locked out should the player side with her turn out to be unfounded.  Paradox as a whole has been very careful to make sure every area can be returned to by the player.  On beating Lily, Lucia's tower in the south opens up.  We'll have a nose around there tomorrow.

Let's Play Monmusu Quest: Paradox! part 41

Witch Hunt Village (The Choice)

Welcome to part 41 of my Monmusu Quest: Paradox playthrough.  The first part of this insanity can be found back here.

Currently we're off to Witch Hunt Village to play peacemaker in demon civil war.  It's not the easiest place to get to as we have to circle around the edge of the mountain range to the north.

The northern deserts have slightly different monsters.  Crocodile girls and cobra girls from Sphinx's pyramid become regular encounters.

Once we get off the sands it's time to see some brand new monster girls.  Big Spider.

Big nope.

Her temptation attack is to wrap our dick in sticky silk.

Then it's nope and even more nope as she climbs on Luka's back and a tube comes out of her abdomen for intensive sperm sucking.

The artwork didn't hit the spot for me at all with this one.  Her head is a weird size, her expressions odd and the colouration makes it look like she has a beard.  Nope, nope, nopity nope (and I even quite like arachnes).

Because it is such a long way around the mountains I decide to leave off the temptation attacks until I reach the village.

At the village someone in witchy gear meets us and tells us there are no problems.  Lily is the feudal lord and everything is in hand.

Both Sara and Alice, who have various ruling claims to this area, acknowledge they have to get to the bottom of what's going on.

We run into one of the villagers.

Yep, nothing to see here.  Nothing at all…

Her wormy arms are a power gifted to her by Lily.  The village used to burn witches and the men used to treat the women abominably.  Lily put a stop to this and everyone loves her.  There isn't a male character in the village that isn't either an old dude or young boy.  This is not suspicious in the slightest…

The battle-fucker also has a witchy look to her.  A little too manic.

She does have variations in her artwork, which is a change.  To be honest, I think the battle-fucker thing has been one addition to Paradox that hasn't really seemed necessary.  This might have something to do with my irrational hatred of the sound of a saxophone.

Lily greets us at the entrance of her mansion and takes us to one side to give her story.

Yep, they massacred all the dudes.  But they deserved it, honest.

Hmm, if you say so, Lily.

She asks us if we'll help her to put down the resistance by taking out opposition leader, Lucia.

We don't have to make the decision now.  We decide not to and after leaving the mansion a representative of the other side asks us to come along and hear their side of the story.  The opposition is hiding in a house on top of the hill in the upper north-east corner of the village.

A previously-locked door is now open and Lucia can be found in the basement.

I didn't remember Lucia being so endowed in the chest department in the original series.  That might have been because I was too busy trying to stop her gobbling up Luka with her giant grub arm last time around.

In the previous series Lily was a mad alchemist/sorceress that took over the village as revenge for how she'd been treated by the village.  Lucia was one of her 'experiments' and got her revenge by gobbling Lily up.

This time around Lucia was Lily's primary research assistant.  This civil war has kicked off over a difference in ideology.  Lily wants to spread her cure out across the world to care of the evil menz everywhere.  Lucia thinks that will end up in the power being abused and twisted so that it's a tool for the strong to oppress the weak.

Okay, so it looks like we're getting another choice between characters.  As with Alice and Ilias at the beginning I guess it's a case of picking whichever one we want in the party.

I'll sleep on it and make the choice tomorrow.

Let's Play Monmusu Quest: Paradox! part 40

Grandoll (Moar Succubus!)

This is part 40 of my Monmusu Quest: Paradox playthrough (part 1 here).  Now with 100% more succubus.

Last up we'd just returned from the succubus-induced wreckage of Luddite Village and Queen Sara had stepped down to become Swordmaiden Sara (When what we really want is Succubus Sara).

As an aside I think I'll also echo my disappointment in how Sara is handled in the party.  She's single race Human.  I was expecting her to be dual race Human/Succubus.  None of her request moves utilise her succubus form.  This is odd given that Paradox has been extremely efficient in re-using the art assets from MGQ and Succubized Sara had a ton of CG scenes in MGQ: Chapter 3.  It makes me think those aspects of Sara will be 'unlocked' at a later point in the game.

Back to the story.  A guard bursts in with a message from the Witch Hunt Village.  Its real name is Magian Stare (ok, it probably isn't, but that's what machine translation spits out).   Civil war has broken out with demon fighting demon.

In the original MGQ series Witch Hunt Village was the fiefdom of mad sorceress Lily.  Sounds like she's having a harder time of it in Paradox.

Luka agrees to take the detour to sort it out.  Alice agrees.  It's a fight between opposing demon factions and as she's the demon lord she should get involved.  She also thinks it will be good training before they tackle the 3rd Tartarus pit.

Witch Hunt Village is to the west, but as it involves a substantial detour around the mountains Sara suggests stopping off at Grandoll (my translator says Grand Dole, but the reasoning given behind Grandoll in the comments from a couple of days back sounds better) on the way.

Getting to Grandoll is a little awkward as involves circling around the top to cross the right bridges.

One of Sara's guards meets us at the entrance to the town.  He's having a little difficulty concentrating.  A succubus has taken over the theatre and her presence is distracting everyone.

So what's in Grandoll?

Hmm, I think I found the battle-fucker.

Her name is Melody and dancing is her speciality.

Unfortunately for her, my Luka has done a little too much battling on my mission to find everything and recruit every monster girl.  He's a little over-levelled (I think TTR recommends characters should be around level 24 at the end of Paradox chapter 1.  My Luka is already at 27).  It's not even close.  Luka still has 300 HP left even after Melody has done her sexy dance.  The reward is the Dancing scroll.

At this point I should confess it took me a very long time to figure out what these open scrolls are actually for.  Skills are all grouped under classes (White Magic, Thievery, Mercantile, Dancing).  The different jobs and races all have access to various skills.  If you move a character to a job/race that doesn't have access to the right skill class, they will still know the skill but will be unable to use it.  Equipping them the relevant skill class scroll will enable them to use the skills they've learned even if their current job/race doesn't allow it.  This is very useful if you want to, for example, level Remi up in Magician after maxing out Priest and White Mage and still be able to access her White Magic skills.

Ilias is also in town, still with only an entourage of a slime girl and dog girl.  She and Alice finally find some common ground.  The cookies of Grandoll are delicious.

There's a house where one dude appears to have a harem of around 10 mermaids.  Well, if you've got the dosh…

Grandoll is freakin' huge.  I wonder if TTR got a little carried away when building these settlements.  Talking to the various NPCS unlocks more rumours.  Everyone loves Saki.  The war has shut down the weapons store.  Everyone thinks Grand Noah's ant girl forces are going to batter everyone in the war.  Gnome is to the north and some people are baking bread for Gnome day, whatever that is.

Oh, and there's another mafiosa type running things.  They have a massive mansion in the north of the town.  There's a rumour the Don might have been involved in an attempt on Robo-Pope's life (before he became Robo-Pope).  We're allowed in because of our connections to Erika in Monte Carlo (at the time I wondered what that actually did, now it seems to be a checkpoint on a rather long side quest).

The Don is upstairs.  His name's Merlin.  Hmm, that name seems familiar from somewhere, and not the Arthurian legend.  He gives the standard villain justification speech about controlled evil being better than uncontrolled evil and how the former Sabasa king understood that enough to leave him alone.

After we leave there's a cutscene where a very slick-looking Lazarus crawls out from hiding under the table.  Ah, this Merlin was the same dude that was part of the original adventuring party with Lazarus and Marcellus.  Hmm, shenanigans menanigans.  I'm guessing TTR is seeding stuff here for future chapters.  Unsurprisingly, Lazarus seems just as untrustworthy as his MGQ-series counterpart.

Then it's time to head off to the theatre to deal with the succubus.  The theatre is full of Saki's adoring fans.  She's currently bouncing around on the stage.  We go up and challenge her for good, decency and that sort of thing.

Like a plonker, I do the save-to-reload-later-and-see-Bad-End thing, only to save right over.  Thankfully, TTR added the Hades section for people that wanted to re-fight the one-off fights.  One quick thrown fight later and we see Saki's Bad End.

She drains Luka to death in an after-hours live sex show-cum-execution.  Yeah, she's probably a bad girl.

After being beaten Saki is sad that her show is being shut down.  Then she notices we travel a lot and asks if she can come with us for 'Saki's World Tour'.  Why yes, we'd love to have the gorgeous and sexy pop superstar join our harem… cough… team.

UN_DO's monster girls so far have had multiple scenes with a lot of variety.  So it's a little disappointing that Saki's three request scenes are all variations on the same pose (although each has additional options).

One of them is amusing in that if Luka abstains from masturbating over her sexy new costume, she sprouts some feelers and jerks him off anyway.  Even MGQ's milder-looking succubi have a bit of the Lovecraftian to them.

There are additional scenes with Saki that are similar to her Bad End.  They involve unlocking some additional content by speaking to the stage manager with Saki in the party.

At first the manager is depressed about most of his audience leaving now that Saki has gone.  Nice one breaking it, Luka.  Come back to him with Saki in the party and it unlocks the option to put on various stage shows depending on which monster girls have been recruited.  There are rewards for each show, but mostly they're there to provide laughs as various monster girls try to put on a show but end up trying to eat each other or injuring the audience.  Saki's extra scenes appear at the bottom of the menu – Saki after hours – where she'll put on a sex show involving Luka.  The gold cost for each is waived if Saki's affection is taken up to 100 in the castle.

Right, that's enough fun and games (and the theatre shows are worth checking out even though they don't have CGs).  Tomorrow we continue the journey around the mountains to Witch Hunt Village.

Oh, as we're at 40 posts (and nearly 40K words), I suppose I should put in a plug for my books.  If you like what you've read so far and like to read about sexy (and bad) succubi doing sexy (and bad) things, you might want to check out my ebooks.  They can be bought from Amazon here, or Smashwords here, or directly from my publisher here.  This is the best way to support what I'm doing, and you'll also get plenty of sexy reading material in return ;).